A Conversation with Jenny Quinton: Eco-education, Biophobia & Nature Healing
By Jenny Quinton 22 July, 2025
Nestled in the forests of Lantau Island, Ark Eden is a "green paradise" for HKers to escape stress & reconnect with nature. We chat to its founder Quinton to find out how eco-education can help heal the planet & our relationships
Read more from Jenny Quinton →
Jenny Quinton is an environmentalist and an educator based in Hong Kong. In 2005, she left her job as a primary school teacher and founded Ark Eden, a permaculture farm and eco-education centre in the forests of Lantau Island. Since then, Ark Eden has brought outdoor education to thousands of children through their holiday camps, developed sustainability programs for educational institutions and corporates, and planted close to 40,000 native trees in the hills of Mui Wo.
CWR: We’re so glad to speak with you, Jenny. It’s quite amazing that a “green paradise” like Ark Eden exists in a concrete city like Hong Kong. Can you tell us what Ark Eden does? Why do you think city people flock there?
Jenny Quinton (JQ): Thank you so much for coming to talk to me today! I think mostly Ark Eden is a beautiful place in nature that provides a green haven for people and animals and plants.
From native tree-planting to Forest School Nature Camps…
…Ark Eden offers a breath of fresh air for people to reconnect with nature
Ark Eden does a range of ecological restoration projects – native tree-planting and agricultural revitalization; eco-education day programmes, camps and youth leadership for schools and universities; corporate programmes; 20 weeks a year of Forest School Nature Camps that run every school holiday; wellness programmes; community events, training and certification in Forest School, Play for Peace and Permaculture. We do a lot!
Why do people flock here? Oh, I guess we can offer people the breath of fresh air they need to reconnect with nature. Time out from the city and their stressful lives. A place to renew and learn values and skills that can help them. Time to play and to give back to nature too.
CWR: This year is the 20th anniversary of Ark Eden – congratulations! Can you share some reflections on this journey? Is Ark Eden today what you imagined it to be at the beginning?
JQ: Thank you so much! In reflection it’s been a pretty wild ride! The Ark has certainly sailed the high seas. It has been a bit of a roller coaster ride to say the least. COVID-19 certainly was a challenge and created a large wave of change.
Ark Eden was first created as a conservation strategy for Lantau, modelling off the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK
At the beginning, Ark Eden was created as a conservation strategy for Lantau Island. I had watched the north side of Lantau alter drastically from buffalo fields and pink dolphin bays into the new airport and the new town of Tung Chung, connected with roads and bridges. At the same time, the hills were continuously burning every Grave Sweeping Festival and my favourite river, the Wang Tong River, got box concreted in. It was very painful for me and for many others living here to witness (what I saw) as the pain of the land during this time. Like others I felt very sad and helpless.
The idea of Ark Eden was to provide an alternative plan for Lantau. A group of us got together and thought about how we could create a vision for Lantau as “a Refuge for a place of Great Happiness,” modelling off the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK. We would focus on the preservation and conservation of Lantau as a living, world class natural environmental wonder in China and Asia.
Jenny then gave up her teaching job & decided to cultivate eco-education in nature
When the principal driver and designer (and genius in my eyes) Neil McLaughlin died, this big project idea slipped back in its box.
Except I promised Neil I would ‘do’ Ark Eden shortly before he died. But all I knew what to do was educate children. So I gave up my very secure job in an ESF school and decided to cultivate environmental education in nature – that was the only place that environmental education really worked.
That was where I started. On September 6th, 2006, we ran our first environmental fieldtrip in Tai O. We started all sorts of projects like planting native trees and farming. Corporates also joined in full force, and we regenerated hillsides and valleys.
Their first field trip was to Tai O in 2006…
…then they started doing various projects like planting native trees & farming…
…corporates also joined in full force & together they were able to regenerate hillsides & valleys
During COVID, the school and corporate programmes dropped out but parents wanted their children to spend holiday time in nature. Everyone needed wellness at the time too. I trained to become a yoga teacher, and we managed to get a record number of species of native trees to plant.
Post-COVID the school and corporate programmes have gradually been coming back. It is getting busy again now. It has taken everyone a while to get back on their feet and everything is still so unstable for everyone. But we are an Ark and flow with the water. And I have still not given up our original dream to conserve and recover our beautiful Lantau Island.
CWR: As the impacts of climate change intensify, what role does Ark Eden play for Hong Kong? Can education through conservation be a way of adapting to a changing climate?
JQ: As we speak the weather is 35 degrees. I mean wow. And we have summer camp with 54 children today. These children here really learn how to look after themselves in hot weather. To wear their hats, drink water and be smart. I am even more grateful for our tall trees and the beautiful cold clear stream that runs through the valley swamped by trees.
It’s 35°C! Children need to learn how to take care themselves in increasingly hot weather
Environmental education in some form is what we do all the time here. Last week we had a local secondary school on a 5-day programme on climate change, stewardship and leadership. We ran the “Climate Fresk” game with the students and explored solutions for climate change.
Through planting native trees, growing local food, and doing advocacy work, we are always tying in the message of environmental action and climate change to practical actions to take.
Recently we worked on educating our staff, partners, parents, and students on local biodiversity protection for Hong Kong’s remaining 32 pink dolphins and very few finless porpoises. This was because the government opened public consultation for the Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (BSAP) and we encouraged everyone to voice their concerns to them. These creatures are canaries in the coalmine and we are losing them! We need a massive scale up in environmental education and outdoor nature connection for students to care about preserving it.
CWR: Still, many people in Hong Kong don’t enjoy being outdoors – some even have “biophobia” or a fear of nature. The rise of AI might make this disconnect become worse too. Do you see this, has it changed over the years and how do you help them overcome it?
JQ: Yes, we see and experience it all the time. Of the 21 local secondary school students with us last week there was one student who said he was happy and confident in nature and the majority were eco-phobic. The teachers were also uncomfortable in nature.
You need to help people get out of their comfort zones & grow
Ark Eden uses different frameworks of teaching and learning to address eco-phobia such as Forest School Education, Holistic Education, Wellness and Nature Arts Therapy, Outdoor Experiential Education and Social Permaculture. We teach people values and skills that help them reconnect with nature. It is a process that we keep adapting and adding to. You just have to go in gentle with a stepping stone approach. You need to help people get out of their comfort zones and grow. But you don’t want to do anything that will panic them. Gradually they experience a freedom that comes from losing fears, which brings joy. And they keep going. Its really a beautiful thing.
CWR: Many of us struggle with eco-anxiety and AI-anxiety these days. What steps can we take to destress, find hope, and see the forest rather than the trees?
JQ: Don’t watch the news! Get off your devices! Spend time in nature – and play! This is a really big and relevant question.
“Don’t watch the news! Get off your devices! Spend time in nature – & play!”
I will answer it from an Ark Eden stance. For all our programmes, devices are kept inside the bags all day. When we do 5-day overnight camps we keep phones in the office. That in itself is one of the biggest destressers for the students. As a result, they socialize more. They laugh and play and get louder and louder as the days go by. Often one of the largest takeaways for them is the friendships they build, which is what they really want most of all.
Some young people now find relationships terribly difficult and we are addressing this all the time. We partner with an organisation called Play for Peace whose core values are inclusion, safety, co-operation and fun. We play these games that help children and young people have more empathy and connect with each other. We also run activities that help people find belonging in a place and this hugely helps anxiety. We also run mindfulness activities.
After a programme ends, we keep encouraging people to keep taking themselves into nature and exploring new experiences.
From forest bathing to traditional bean-curd making, HKers can explore many new experiences in nature
There is a lot more nature connecting going on in Hong Kong now – forest bathing, kayaking, nature arts, botanical arts, downhill biking, jungle gyms, pizza workshops, dolphin watching, visiting the water buffalo, rice-farming, native tree-planting, traditional bean-curd making, eco-building with clay, oyster bed restoration, kite-surfing and on and on.
Just leave your phone at home for a day. Go for a shady walk. We are so lucky to live in this beautiful nature city; it is a place like no other.
So I say – be the one to pop out of your digital world and start to breathe the flowers!!!
Further readings
- Nature as Leverage: Design Approach For Climate Change – Despite the massive climate challenges, Probst, Associate Director at MLA+, remains optimistic thanks to a new design thinking methodology – ‘Nature as Leverage’ – and showcases 3 example projects in the GBA
- Peak Sustainability Ventures: Early-stage Water Investing in India – Isn’t it ironic that the modern age of AI co-exists with a billion people that don’t have access to clean drinking water? We chat with Shah, Managing Partner of Peak Sustainability Ventures who doesn’t think only investing in ‘sexy’ tech will solve our water problems
- If Earth gets sick, so do you – Earth’s growing fever has repercussions for human health. What should we be worried about? How is climate change changing the transmission of >20 tropical diseases? Are our brains at risk? Marley from The Conversation covers these questions and more
More on Latest
- A Conversation with Dr. Kongjian Yu on Restoring Our “Sponge Planet” – Concrete cities are ill-equipped for extreme rainfall & flash floods. But can we fix that by blending old tech & philosophies with modern ones? We chat to the “Father of Sponge Cities,” Dr. Yu, to find out more
- 5 Lessons from Ancient Civilizations for Keeping Homes Cool in Hot, Dry Climates – When aircons fail in a heatwave, how do you stay cool? For millennia, ancient civilisations knew how to cope. Zuniga-Teran from the University of Arizona reveals how “old” designs can improve modern architecture for hotter climates
- Drought and Farming: How Women in South Africa are Using Indigenous Knowledge to Cope – Millions of small-scale farmers in South Africa are affected by drought. Yet local adaptation methods are often dismissed by the govt. University of Zululand’s Mzimela & Moyo expand on the importance of Indigenous knowledge
